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Agency Management

Over the past 20 years, the business of how marketers manage agencies has changed substantially.

The discipline has seen movement from a commission based remuneration system to other commercial models, the introduction of online systems, brand and consumer globalization, the rise of holding companies, and most recently questions over the meaning of the term ‘agent’.

The industry is not what it used to be and continues to evolve.

Now the industry environment is more complex, challenging, dynamic, unstable, global, interrupted, diverse, and populated with both consumer and supplier participants whose roles have also changed and evolved.

However, some fundamentals of managing agencies still remain:

Clients want to build great brands

They want great agency partners

Agencies love opportunities to make great work

And both clients and agencies want a fair return

So, the client-agency partnership remains paramount.

And some of the complexity resides in the mechanics and the business of achieving the above fundamentals. Clients want to trust their agencies and spend with confidence based on informed decisions and sound advice. Agencies want to be trusted and earn a fair return for their ideas and effort.

Some ideas to successfully manage agencies include:

Invest to ensure you have the right systems, people, skills and resources to achieve your objectives and manage your environment.

Work with agencies that want to collaborate and partner for success.

Educate your internal stakeholders and ensure they understand and support the value of what you do.

Learn from others.

Assess, adapt and innovate as you would expect your agency to do.

Accept complexity and the ever changing new normal – the industry will continue to change.

Agency management can still be fun, exciting and a creative –but now we can add in dimensions such as fiscally responsible, commercially robust, analytical, data driven and tech savvy.